Infographic: Scientists’ Predictions for the Distant Future

What Might the Earth and the Universe Look Like in a Thousand Years, a Million, or a Billion?

Accurately predicting the future is no easy feat, but through careful study of the past and collection of data, we can make some educated guesses as to what might happen. Scientists are continually striving towards this goal, and have made some fascinating (and terrifying) predictions about the centuries and millennia to come. These range from 1,000 years from now — a minuscule distance on the larger timeline — to a staggering one hundred quintillion years (i.e. 100,000,000,000,000,000,000).

The following infographic from InformationisBeautiful.net compiles predictions from NASA, Britannica, Scientific American, and other publications to create a timeline of the distant future. Some of these events are based on extrapolating progressions at their current rates, while others are based on mathematical probability, such as the estimated odds of a supervolcano or climate-altering asteroid significantly affecting Earth. We certainly won’t all agree on these predictions, but they’re still interesting to consider.